AMERICAN HISTORICAL NOVELS discussion

Aimie K. RunyanGirls on the Line:

REBECCA: Hello Aimie & thank you for hosting this week! To start, can you please tell us a little about yourself and your novel?
How were you inspired to write Girls on the Line?

AIMIE: A friend of mine, a former captain in the US Army Signal corps, sent me an article about the ‘Hello Girls’, the women who served as telephone operators in WWI with the note ‘you should write this book. This is what you do’. A paragraph in to the article, I knew it should be a book. By the end of the article, I knew it had to be my book.

REBECCA: Can you give us insight into your writing process?
AIMIE: I pretty much have from 9:30 AM until 3:30 PM to scribble away. I’ve found that setting word goals and blocking off time for administrative duties like marketing and social media, has been very important in being productive. Six hours seems so huge at 9:30 AM and so short by 2:30 PM that I have to instill a sense of panic in myself early in the day.

REBECCA: What type of research did you do for writing Girls on the Line?
AIMIE: I went to the WWI Museum in Kansas City to visit the archives. They had tons of documentation that the surviving operators gathered up in the 1970s during their lawsuit against the US Government to reinstate their veteran status and benefits. I had the amazing opportunity to interview the lawyer, Mark Hough, who won the case, and to correspond with the granddaughters of two of these remarkable women. The research really came together beautifully on this book.

REBECCA: Did you find anything in your research that was particularly fascinating or that helped shaped the novel?
AIMIE: The first Chief Operator, Grace Banker, kept a journal (against orders, the little minx) and that was immeasurably helpful in creating a timeline and understanding what the day-to-day was like for these women. Berthe Hunt, a supervisor, also kept a detailed journal that was great for some of those minute details as well—especially the weather. I didn’t have to guess for a second what the conditions were like for these women at all, which was a luxury.

REBECCA: What was your favorite scene to write?
AIMIE: Anything with Ruby and Andrew was fun, but the final scene with Ruby and her mother was probably my favorite to write. I knew what I wanted to achieve and it spilled right out. Mabel really is a fantastic character, and I wish she’d had more screen time, but her presence is felt pretty heavily throughout the book.

REBECCA: What was the most difficult scene to write?
AIMIE: Hmmm, I can’t think of any scenes that were particularly hard to write in this book, as I wrote out of order on this book and moved where the wind blew me (which led to problems, let me tell you!) but there were several scenes that I enjoyed writing that I ended up having to cut to make the pacing work. Every single one was important to write, however, so none of those words or time was wasted.

REBECCA: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?\
AIMIE: .,3rd grade. We were given blank story books and were told to write what we wanted. While so many assignments were so structured (and rightly so at that age) the freedom of that assignment was exhilarating. If memory serves, I wrote a humorous retelling of the story of Atalanta from Greek mythology. One of the class grandmothers made all the books and mine was leopard print. My first hardcover… good times. That same year, I was cast as Scribbler Mouse in the class play, and there was no turning back, I suppose.
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REBECCA: What was the first historical novel you read?
AIMIE: The ones that stick out from my tween years are the historical sagas that were written as part of the Sweet Valley High series. They had a lot more meat and depth to them than the rest, and I loved the structure of following Elizabeth and Jessica’s foremothers through some of the biggest events in history. I started gravitating toward historical romances and the like because I loved to be swept away in time and space. The first serious work of Hist Fic I remember reading was Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It was definitely a book that shaped me as a reader and writer.

REBECCA: What historical time period do you gravitate towards the most with your personal reading?
AIMIE: Colonial era and earlier, usually. Though a good WWI/WWII book is hard to resist.

REBECCA: What do you like to do when you aren't writing?
AIMIE: Bake, hike, swim, go to the theater or the movies, play with my kiddos, and all the usual sorts of Colorado outdoorsy things.

REBECCA: Lastly, will you have more projects together in the future?
AIMIE Yes! My next book is tentatively called Across the Winding River and is a WWII family saga told from 3 points of view.

REBECCA: Looking forward to this week with you, Aimie!

I loved Girls on the Line! Cannot wait for your next book - I love WWII historical fiction.

That is interesting about them keeping journals when they were not supposed to. I’m glad they did, or we may not have known some of the things they journaled about! Thank you for being apart of this group, I have fallen in love with historical war books and look forward to reading yours.

Great interview!